Tornado Touches Down Near Smithville Airport

The Smithville Times

• The National Weather Service reported a tornado touched down near the Smithville airport on Tuesday and headed toward Paige in northeast Bastrop County. Its touchdown was confirmed by the weather service around 11 a.m. as it moved northeast at 20 mph. No injuries have been reported. The Smithville tornado was the fourth reported on Tuesday morning. At 9:31 a.m., a tornado was confirmed 13 miles southwest of Bastrop moving northeast at 20 mph. A second tornado was located at 9:40 a.m., 10 miles southwest of Bastrop near Cedar Creek moving north at 30 mph and a third tornado was confirmed seven miles southwest of Bastrop at 9:48 a.m., forecasters said. It was moving north at 30 mph. A tornado watch was issued by the weather service for Travis, Williamson, Bastrop, Caldwell and Hays Counties just 10 minutes before the Smithville tornado touched down.

• The Bastrop County Commissioners Court began a discussion into possibly creating a uniform procedure to govern the creation of public utility districts as developers continue expressing high interest in home building in rural areas. A public improvement district (PID) is a special district created within an unincorporated area of a county in which the district’s property owners reimburse a developer for the cost of building infrastructure and improvements within the district. Public improvement districts and municipal utility districts have been used to pay for many subdivisions throughout the county. However, PIDs are not without their risks.

• Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Refuge Ranch a 48- bed long-term treatment center for sex-trafficked girls in Bastrop County, has been hosting a series of Zoom chats between the girls and successful women from varied backgrounds to stave off quarantine anxieties with a dose of hope and inspiration. The Zoom hangout series kicked off on March 25 with gymnast and dancer Ariana Berlin and seven-time NCAA Champion coach Valorie Kondos Field. The Zoom series has also featured the Dixie Chicks, Olympian Simidele Adeagbo, the first African woman to participate in the Winter Olympics, computational biologist Laura Boykin, Marisol Nichols, who is cast in the Riverdale TV series, New York Times cartoonist Liza Donnelley and Bethany Hamilton, a surfer who survived a shark attack.

Yoakum Herald-Times

• A Houston man making his way home in a privatelyowned plane crash landed his single-engine aircraft on May 1 in rural Lavaca County and managed to walk away unharmed. Joel Straughen, 57, said he was flying home from his Uvalde area ranch Friday evening when he lost power and began emergency landing plans at the Hallettsville airport. He never made the runway because he was forced to crash land his Erco Model 415-C nose-first just shy of a hayfield.